A Counter Example to Cercignani's Conjecture for the $d$ Dimensional Kac Model

TL;DR

This paper provides a counterexample to Cercignani's conjecture in the context of the $d$ dimensional Kac model, demonstrating that the entropy-entropy production ratio depends strongly on the number of particles, challenging assumptions about relaxation rates.

Contribution

The paper extends previous one-dimensional results to the $d$ dimensional Kac model, showing that the entropy-entropy production ratio remains strongly dependent on particle number.

Findings

Counterexample to Cercignani's conjecture in $d$ dimensions

Entropy-entropy production ratio depends heavily on particle number

Challenges assumptions about relaxation rates in kinetic models

Abstract

Kac's $d$ dimensional model gives a linear, many particle, binary collision model from which, under suitable conditions, the celebrated Boltzmann equation, in its spatially homogeneous form, arise as a mean field limit. The ergodicity of the evolution equation leads to questions about the relaxation rate, in hope that such a rate would pass on the Boltzmann equation as the number of particles goes to infinity. This program, starting with Kac and his one dimensional 'Spectral Gap Conjecture' at 1956, finally reached its conclusion in a series of papers by authors such as Janvresse, Maslen, Carlen, Carvalho, Loss and Geronimo, but the hope to get a a limiting relaxation rate for the Boltzmann equation with this linear method was already shown to be unrealistic. A less linear approach, via a many particle version of Cercignani's conjecture, is the grounds for this paper. In our paper, we extend recent results by the author from the one dimensional Kac model to the $d$ dimensional one, showing that the entropy-entropy production ratio, $\Gamma_N$, still yields a very strong dependency in the number of particles of the problem when we consider the general case.